Pictures of the year 2012: space

The second of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project is a 340-million-pixel vista of the central parts of our galactic home. The image shows the region spanning the sky from the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) to Scorpius (the Scorpion). The dusty lane of our Milky Way runs obliquely through the image, dotted with bright, reddish nebulae. This dark lane also hosts the very centre of our galaxy, where a supermassive black hole is lurking. This mosaic was assembled from 52 different sky fields made from about 1,200 individual images totalling 200 hours exposure time, with the final image having a size of 24,403 x 13,973 pixels.Picture: EPA/ESO/STEPHANE GUISARD